Wednesday, July 31, 2013

While on Pinterest I came across some web sites that have activities to do with BOB Books. Mason has really enjoyed working with these FREE Printable and thought I would share with you all. I looked through each one and printed what would work best for Mason so I have a little bit from these sites

Mason has not been very interested in learning to read till a couple of months ago. Along with "Teach Your Child to Read" (My post about it here) we have been doing BOB Books. These have been very easy and short to get through them. Mason feels very accomplished finishing each book and is always eager to move on to the next one. We have enjoyed them a lot more with the games and worksheets we got from the links above. It sure makes it more exciting to do some hands on activities instead of just reading them and moving on.

We got our Books at Barnes and Nobles but when I was at Costco I notice they carry them too. Their version is much bigger and about $3 less.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

We got Handwriting Without Tears at the beginning of summer to work on Masons writing. Along with the workbook I got the Teacher Guide and chalkboard. I read through the teacher Manuel and its good if you what to add more things along with the workbook. Example they have songs, wooden letters, and extra activities. It also gives you access to their online printables. I ended up not using the teacher book since the work book is pretty easy to use.

This is the front of the book. We have the Letters and Numbers for Me and they do have several other books as well.

This is the inside of the book. At the top it shows you how to form the letter by writing it, with the wooden pieces and with the chalk board. Also the workbook has a shaded part to resemble the space they use on the chalk board. The very last letter they write the shaded area is removed so the kids just write on the line.

What we use:

Chalk board

Small piece of chalk

A small bowl with water

Small sponge

And a small paper towel

The sponge, chalk, and paper towel are small so they can be grabbed like a pencil.

First I show Mason how to write the letter on the chalk board "E" for example would start at the top left corner. The chalk board has a happy face there. As I write I say Big line, frog jump (pick up chalk) back to the Happy Face. Then its little line, little line, and little line.

Second Masons turn to trace what I wrote. He takes the wet sponge and traces the "E" repeating what he is doing big line, little line and so on.

Third Mason takes the paper towel and traces it again and repeats what he is doing

Fourth we blow on the chalk board and now it's ready for us to write on it again.

Next I show him how to write it again but if he got it the first time then he writes on the board and repeats all the above steps. We do this a couple of times till he feels like he is ready to write on his big boy book.

He writes his letter then he checks his work and if its all good there's a place for him to check mark. After that we color the picture. As extra practice I ask him to write the word by the picture.

Mason has really enjoyed this workbook and he has always loved to color so after writing its a nice reward for him to color the picture. It's been very easy for me to do with him as we'll. Now that we have been doing it a couple of weeks we use our chalk board only if its a letter he has a hard time writing, that way he can practice before we get to the workbook.

Here he is working on the letter "O"

Also this book teaches capital letters first, then lower case, then numbers. Here's the table of contents so you can see the order which they are taught since its not an ABC order. (ill get better pics of the table o content tomorrow)

Friday, July 26, 2013

Made it out to the Asian Pacific Market to see if they had some Bento supplies. I was more in the look out for accessories like picks, molds, cutters, and baran. Unfortunately they did not have many things. They had some rice molds and bento boxes. I ended up getting two bento boxes, a small rice mold and some seaweed

$1.99

$3.79

$2.40

So I did not end up getting what I really wanted but the stuff was so cheep! I want to use the little rice mold to make mini spam musubi see if Mason likes it. The seaweed I got for the musubi and to cut eyes, mouth, and just random stuff to decorate.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

I started working with My little guy on reading. I did some research and decided to go with the book "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons." One thing that drew me into purchasing this book is that it had a script for me to follow. It tells me how to present the material to him. The part that I say out loud is in red so it's very easy to follow. We where both super excited to start these lessons and we did them every morning after breakfast. By lesson 20 I think we both got a little frustrated ( mostly me) because he wanted to do other stuff and I just needed him to focus. As his mom I feel like I know what he is capable of achieving and when he does not perform I'm like "child I KNOW you can do this." I was feeling like he was not getting anything out of it, we where both getting upset at the situation so I decided to put the book down a couple of days. I want him to love reading and not see it as an assignment so I stepped back to reevaluate my approach. Seeing how some boys don't like reading much I did not want my approach to turn him off from reading. I thought to myself who says we have to do this in the mornings? Why can't we do it at night before bedtime when he is more calm and settled? Well that's what I did, right after bath time we started doing our "homework" as we call it and then we do our story time. It does add something extra to our bedtime routine but wow what a difference that simple change did. We are now in lesson 41 and he can actually read the little stories in the book. I do not use the scripted part much now since we both know what comes next and what we need to do. He is so excited every night to do his homework and now it's takes us 10min or so to go through our lessons. It's very quick and very easy. The last part of each lesson has a writing assignment where your child just writes a couple of the letters they have learned. This was working great for us when we where doing it in the mornings since we were at a table. Now that we do it at night and in bed we skip this part. To supplement the writing part we do "Handwriting with out Tears." Ill do another post on just that book.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

I met a neighbor at the park recently and we started talking about ours boys. Let me tell you how comforting it is to hear another mama say that her little boy acts just like my little boy. To hear that the jumping off the wall and always one the move is not only my kid. We where defines blessed that we did not experience any terrie two like other parents. Now when mason turned four is when more of his character starting coming out especially since he was able to communicate more. Now as a five year old he is very outspoken with his views on food and even the way he dresses. He is daddies son for sure, loves gym shorts and t-shirts and has a love for tennis shoes. As for what he gets from me....attitude 100%. Daddy says he is exactly like me which mean Mason and I have some disagreements. He is a mamas boy too he loves to cuddle A LOT! I'm definitely looking forward what kind of man he will become.